Tag Archives: Social Constructions

Confession: I’ve developed a bad habit since I started this blog. My eyes and ears are always opened to any and all issues that I think might be relevant to bring up in this forum. So basically, and I think I’ve mentioned this here in the past, no conversation or passing comment related to women and men goes unnoticed when I’m around. It may very well end up on this blog. Names and places will always be left off but you might recognize yourself – you’ve been warned.

I was at a dinner the other day and for a time much of the attention was focused around this young child, who was sweetly interacting with one of the other dinner guests. Some of the other guests were commenting to each other about how cute this young boy was, and he really was, and cooing about the way he was dressed and the way he was interacting with the other guest. Then a comment from one of the side conversations caught my attention. “I really want to have all boys, girls are just too much drama”, I overheard one of my friends say. The others around her nodded and spoke up in agreement, interjecting their own brief statements of why boys were preferable to girls. Boys were easy to dress, girls wouldn’t let their moms dress them, boys are more easy going, girls are high maintenance – basically boys > girls.

As I sat there listening to some people I consider to be pretty amazing women, who would raise terrific women themselves, I couldn’t help but wonder, where were they getting these idea from? And why was everyone so readily agreeing? Did no one think this mass generalization of boys and girls was a bit of an oversimplification of reality? Not every social situation lends itself to serious conversation about the forces that are acting upon us and causing us to accept certain beliefs as fact so I figured this was perhaps not the time in which to bring up the questions above.

This conversation actually reminded me of an article that I think has been going around from Yashar Ali, published on the Huffington Post a few days ago. In it, Ali explains how women have been constantly portrayed as emotional, hyper-sensitive and generally crazy that it impacts not only how men view and treat women but also how women view themselves. His depiction of men interacting with women under this assumption was interesting but more interesting to me was how he was describing women who bought into this idea. He describes an encounter he had with a flight attendant in which he explained that he mainly wrote about women, which caused the flight attendant to respond, “oh, about how crazy we are?”

Much like Ali, her reaction makes me rather depressed. There is very little chance of achieving gender equality, so crucial for the advancement of civilization as a whole, if women themselves hold misconceptions about women. When I was studying ISGP’s document on the equality of women and men in Uganda, one of the women we studied the document with said that before we want to talk about how we can stop men from oppressing women, we have to deal with women oppressing women. She was right. The task of overlooking stereotypes and recognizing someone’s true identity doesn’t lie just with men interacting with women but also with women interaction with women (and men interacting with men for that matter). Essentially, you teach people how to treat you and if women can’t even support other women, why would men support women? Somehow when women can make callous and careless statements about other women it makes you realize we still have a long way to go.

I’ve asked people to contribute to this blog and write about how they try and engender equality in their own lives and a lot have said that they don’t really think they are actively contributing so they don’t have much to write about. Honestly though, if one person in that room would’ve said something, not in a confrontation way, but in a way to invite reflection, that would’ve been engendering equality. We should all take time to reflect and thus become more aware of what is influencing our understanding of gender and relationships between men and women. I think any contribution to equality between women and men requires honest reflection and the realization that our actions and our beliefs are not always perfectly synced, as well as the commitment to achieve that coherence between the two.

I’m always impressed by tough women and sweet men. When I come across individuals who hold those qualities they always stand out in my mind. I think it has something to do with the fact that they go against gender norms and undermine societal pressures to conform to a certain standard of behavior. That’s the type of subversion and rebellion I can really get behind.

The three ladies who won the Nobel Peace Prize at the end of last week definitely fall into that tough lady category. Firstly, there is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, current president of Liberia, first female president in all of Africa, nicknamed the “Iron Lady.” She shares the award with her compatriot, Leymah Gbowee, founder and executive director of Women Peace and Security Network-Africa, who fought to bring an end to the civil war in Liberia, which is the focus of the documentary, “Pray the Devil Back to Hell”. And finally Tawakkul Kamran, the youngest of the three, currently one of the leading activists fighting to bring peace and democracy to Yemen, has been arrested several times and received numerous death threats.

In one of the articles I was reading about these Nobel Prize winners, the author was lamenting the fact that women’s issues are still considered separate issues to be highlighted and defined as its own category. It is funny that women’s issues are considered a special interest when women are actually the majority of the population. But I find myself turning to cynicism sometimes when I read the news so I don’t want to be cynical about this. At the same time though it’s a point worth mentioning because it should help us remember that women’s issues don’t exist in a vacuum. When President Sirleaf promotes mandatory primary education for all Liberians, she does it to help ensure that young girls get to receive an education but she also recognizes that promoting the interests of young girls is not a standalone issue, that she has to be a promoter of education so that these girls (and boys) can help create a better future for themselves and for their country. When Leymah Gbowee mobilized Liberian women to fight to bring about the end of the war in her country she knew that the end of war would ensure peace for of all of Liberia’s people. When Tawakkul Karman protests on the streets of Yemen she does so knowing that her rights are intrinsically tied to that of all Yemenites.

I don’t mean to downplay what these women have accomplished in the field of the advancement of women by discussing the impact their courage has had on more than just women. But the point is that working on women’s issues is working on everyone’s issues. These Nobel Prize winners know that in their push for women’s rights, they are working for the advancement of whole communities, whole countries. That’s the reason why they dedicated their wins to all their people, both men and women, of Liberia and Yemen.

Upon handing out the prize to these three women, the Nobel committee explained, “we cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society.” Actually, I’d go a little further, because I don’t just think achieving the same opportunities as men is exactly the end goal these women are working towards. They aren’t working towards creating spaces alongside men in broken institutions; they’re demanding new institutions and social practices that ensure the prosperity of all. That’s why they are undercutting the status quo. And that’s what being a tough lady is all about, after all.

I’m going to need you guys to explain something for me. We’ve talked about this topic before on the blog, the propagation of the idea that the advancement of women comes at the expense of men and that there is some sort of power struggle happening in our society and any success or promotion of issues that impact women more directly is negative for men.

I just don’t understand the value of promoting this type of thinking. The author of the article The End of Men, which we’ve talked about here and caused a lot of controversy when it was released last year, was featured in Slate Magazine lately in order to discuss this issue and promote a debate that she will be having on this topic later this month. To remind us, Rosin explains that men are falling behind is the job market because they have failed to adapt to the more stereotypically feminine skill set that is become valuable in our postindustrial economy, skills such communication, empathy, social intelligence and consensus building. For Rosin, there has been a shift in society that is seeing women advancing and men falling behind. Now women have become the dominant gender.

This might be a slightly simplistic presentation of Rosin’s ideas but I’m less interested in the specifics of her arguments right now but rather the underlying assumptions she’s making about human behavior and human interaction. She is very much working within the framework of competition—that success looks a certain way and that there can only be a limited number of people who will be able to achieve this success. She’s not making a case on whether the end of men and the dominance of women is a good thing or a bad thing necessarily but just that it’s a fact; it’s the reality of our current economic order.

What I struggle to understand, however, is the value of engaging in this sort of conversation about interactions between men and women. What’s the conversation hoping to achieve? Why are we seeing these interactions as a zero sum game in which there are winners and losers? This thinking is premised in an understanding that there will always be those at the top and those are the bottom, that the success of one sector of society will necessarily come at the expense of the other. But that type of thinking has gotten us into the inherently competitive social reality in which we now exist. I think we’re all losers now, trapped in a reality that tells us that because of how we look, where we live, and what we do, we have act in a certain way.

Our understanding of our social reality should be advancing, should be building on itself and should recognize the inherent interconnectedness of the well being and welfare of all human beings that is an inescapable fact of reality. Yet continually working within frameworks and thinking that espousing competition and zero sum games doesn’t allow us to advance. It’s the same thinking that has shaped our social reality for years and has allowed for the perpetuation of the same broken systems and institutions which promote sexism, racism, classism, war and violence.

So I just have to ask, why?

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Welcome

At the core of this blog is the document “Advancing towards the Equality between Women and Men” prepared by the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity. However, engendering equality is not just a catchy name, it’s also a process we are all engaged in. In order to give us inspiration to be working towards engendering equality this blog tries to create a space in which actions and reflections are shared by individuals on the promotion of the equality of women and men within their social space.